Book Review: Nitty Gritty Grammar

Resource:  Nitty-Gritty Grammar  by Edith H. Fine and Judith P. Josephson, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA, 1998; $ 8.95.

I have to confess, that when I went to pick up  Nitty-Gritty Grammar at the library, I had high expectations for it.  The book’s subtitle, “The Not-So-Serious Guide to Clear Communication,” as well as the bright and cartoon-y cover had led me to expect that the book would be a lot of fun to read.  Perhaps because I had these expectations, I was a bit disappointed with the inside of the book.  I found it to be a rather conventional grammar guide, giving the usual rules followed by example sentences.  Some of the sentences I seemed a bit outdated (Would students of today know Imelda Marcos?), and a few tips given by the authors were strange. (One advises. For example,  that you memorize a list of some fifty prepositions so you can choose the objective form of a pronoun).   Once I was passed my initial disappointment, though, I found a number of things to like in the book.

Nitty-Gritty Grammar is more of a learner’s resource than a teacher’s resource.  It would be a good grammar overview  for a middle-school native-speaker, and it is for this audience that I think the book is written.  The authors are shown in their bio pictures wearing funny police hats with a caption “Grammar Patrol” underneath and the sections have headings  like:” How to Tame the Spelling Monster” and Word Power.”  Perhaps because of this, though, the explanations are short and the book has a very user-friendly look.  The book is divided very conventionally, with sections for the parts of speech, punctuation and sentence structure.   Some of the best material comes at the end, with explanation of frequently-made errors.  The confusion between “all right” and “alright, for example is explained very nicely and succinctly:

      “Use  ‘all right.’  ‘Alright’ is incorrect.  Make it two words. ‘I’m all right!’ Sara yelled down from the    helicopter.”

This would be an excellent resource for an English language learner, especially a younger one.  The author’s explanations are clear but not overly wordy and the larger print, numerous illustrations and absence of large blocks of text make the resource visually a lot less daunting for the learner.  Teachers may find the short explanations useful in distilling the way they present grammar to their classes, and the author has collected numerous cartoons from well-known cartoonists that touch on grammar topics.  These would be great to introduce short grammar lessons.

 In the process of writing this review and exploring the book more deeply, I kept unsuccessfully trying to find a grammar question that  I had that the book didn’t address.  I was amazed to find how much is packed into this little volume. .    In short, despite my initial reaction to Nitty-Gritty Grammar,  I feel  that this low-cost book would actually a very good value, not only for ESL learners, but for their teachers as well.